A Blog About Regenerative Agriculture

biodynamic farming

The ubiquity of this poison is an example of epistemicide. I elaborate on epistemicide at the bottom of this blog.

The chemical that is added to keep Glyphosate in suspension in the herbicide is what lab people give lab rats to create tumours.

I wrote this article on Glyphosate (the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup and its generics) in November 2015. I wanted to make a few comments on the comments about this article that have been made since writing.

First, a note on scientific peer reviewed studies. Science lost it’s credibility a long time ago. Science lost it’s objectivity long ago. The vast majority of scientists will find what their paymasters want them to find. The bigger the industry the more hysterical the so called scientists clamour to defend it, see tobacco, cell phones, pharmaceuticals and of course agricultural chemicals.

To critically evaluate scientists we need to ask the following questions.

Who paid for the research?

Who did the research?

Where did the researcher work before?

Where does the researcher aim to work in the future?

Has the researcher ever served on the boards or worked for the companies in the industry that is being researched?

Has the researcher ever worked for any government agency that regulates the industry being researched?

Have you examined the whole content of the research in the light of common sense?

Many times the summary statement or conclusions do not match the actual data or results.

Second, not everything that exists is measurable. One of the favourite daggers hurled at me when I discuss one element of BioDynamics, namely the energetic part of life, is that for scientists or real farmers to take any of this seriously it needs to be measured. Love is not measurable, not even in grams or millimetres. Hence the scientist has never loved.

Third, Glyphosate is merely the tool through which the agricultural chemical and seed companies are trying to establish their monopoly. It is a very powerful and clever way to achieve what every business wants. The side effects, like those of pharmaceuticals, are beside the point to these corporates who only care about their stock price. In my Goldman Sachs days I completely understood the quarterly driven mania for good results. What Glyphosate is doing is taking agriculture out of the farmers hands and into the corporates. Farmers care about their grandchildren whereas the nature of corporates is to care about the next quarter. These are incompatible values.

Fourth, the best video on Glyphosate is the one below. By retired geneticist Thierry Vrain. Once you have watched this you will understand this poison and it’s ubiquity. It’s chelating, desiccating, antibiotic and herbicide effect.

Fifth, the ubiquity of Glyphosate in our food. There are many butchers in the country who now claim to be supplying their clients with grass fed beef. This is very easy to validate. Earlier this year I tested the meat from many of the butcheries around the country to see if there was any Glyphosate in the meat. If there is Glyphosate then the animals has been fed grain as all grains in this country are grown or killed with Glyphosate. There are a very small handful of grain growers who do not use Glyphosate. I tested lamb and beef and as you can see below there were 8 samples that tested positive. See the photo below.

Finally, Epistemicide, a term coined by Jonathan Code, author of the book Muck and Mind, refers to the cide (the Latin word for killing or death) of epistemology. In other words, the killing of a way of knowing.

What we are never taught, but need to be aware of at all times, is that there is never only one way of knowing. There might appear to be only one but there was never one at the beginning and killing a way of knowing does not make it any less valid. Furthermore all ideas stem from an individual and we all know that no human has access to absolute truth, if such an idea exists.

Very few people are taught to question what is behind the way of knowing. Is the way you were taught mathematics the only way? The same applies to science. Who questions the unquestioned beliefs in society? Unquestioned beliefs only exist because of epistemicide.

The dominant paradigm in the world today is one of reductionism. Where everything is isolated, reduced, quantified and objectified. All of these principles are in violation of life which is not only the opposite of the abovementioned but also contextual. How can anyone claim confusion as to the parlous state of the world when the system is in violation of nature and life? This proves how powerful epistemicide is.

In the world of agriculture and gardening the use of Glyphosate is total. Only the certified BioDynamic and Organic farms do not use Glyphosate. This is an example of the epistemicide of farming and gardening without the use of herbicides.

I was put in touch with these guys recently and if you click on those highlighted words (especially scroll down to the photos with their subtitles) you will get an erudite explanation of what the philosophical underpinning is to our grazing methodology.

To understand what underlies how we farm in harmony with nature in the genuine sense of holism then you need to click on these words by Nicolas Joly and these by Monty Waldin. They are the most eloquent proselytisers for the BioDynamic movement.

Blogs to follow soon on eggs, pigs and the poison/carcinogen/descaler Glyphosate.

I write this with my management accountant hat on. I have an Honours Degree in Management Accounting and studied accounting for 5 years. Not once was the concept of true cost accounting (TCA) mentioned.

If accounting was truly costed, if you will excuse the poor English, then many things would a lot more expensive and some cheaper.

Many costs are externalised or shifted onto the government or the taxpayer and don’t appear in the cost of the item.

I could fill many blog pages with examples but two quick ones will suffice.

First, the price of carbonated sugary drinks does not have the health damage to the human being in it. Considering we are the third most obese nation on earth and these drinks are one of the major causes of this epidemic if our government applied TCA then these drinks would be much more expensive to compensate for a sugar tax.

Second, the grain fed/confinement steak on the supermarket shelf does not have various costs included in it namely A) the health damage to the human being from 1. an Omega 6 overload and 2. antibiotic resistance from the routine antibiotics and 3. the asthma drugs the cattle are finished on and 4. the Vitamin A and D toxicity in their livers from constant exposure to faecal dust, B) the environmental damage from the way the animals are raised in the feedlots/confinement operations, C) the environmental damage from the way the food the animal is fed is produced (soil erosion and Glyphosate poisoning (click here for more on this carcinogen South Africans ingest daily)

Organic and BioDynamic food is priced according to true cost accounting and furthermore it is the only way to feed the world.

I have been fortunate enough to write a column for Longevity Magazine and I wrote the one below on organic agriculture feeding the world.

Angus

1 January 2016

Can organic agriculture feed the world?

Of all the questions asked of me when people come for a real food safari (farm tour) on our farm, Spier in Stellenbosch, this is the most common.

The answer is very simple. Yes.

Not only can organic agriculture feed the world but it should as the humans eating non organic food are sick and the earth is being destroyed by non organic farming. Non organic or extractive farming is known as conventional farming. In time it will be known us unconventional farming as consumers force retailers to stop upholding this lunacy.

A consistent theme of this column is the destruction of the earth by agriculture. 36 rugby fields a day of the rainforest is being cut down. This is the lung of the earth that produces oxygen that we breathe. How long can any human survive without oxygen? If we carry on cutting down rainforest we could soon be finding out.

The rainforest is felled on a daily basis to make space for planting of predominantly 4 crops. Soya, maize, palm oil and sugar cane. Soya and maize are grains that are fed to cattle which by design are meant to eat grass and so the grains violate their digestive system which then results in the meat causing a plethora of inflammatory diseases. We are eating ourselves to disease by choosing conventional/confinement/grain fed beef.

Palm oil is very widely used in the food industry. It has absolutely no health benefit (not that this has ever been a motivation for the food industry) and is another cause behind the inflammatory disease epidemic that humans are facing. An Omega 6 overload is another way to think of it.

Sugar, like palm oil, has no use in modern life. It makes people fat and sick but the food industry loves it because it is more addictive than cocaine, it enhances flavour and is a preservative.

As the rainforest is wiped out so are many species of animals that only live in the rainforest.

The next problem with conventional agriculture is that it leads to soil erosion. There are 20 times more kilograms of topsoil lost annually than there are kilograms of food produced in the world. Organic agriculture builds topsoil.

If you are still unclear of the effect of conventional food on humanity consider that the speciality in medicine that is growing the fastest is oncology. Closer to home we are the third most obese country in the world.

Here is how South Africa can feed itself with grass fed meat (beef, lamb and pigs) and eggs whilst at the same time creating jobs in the integrity food industry.

If you drive from the Transkei border all the way through KZN to Swaziland all you will see, apart from the urban sprawl that the Durban town planners are zealously expanding, is a monoculture of sugar cane. Sugar that makes people fat and sick. Furthermore this monoculture is fed with artificial fertilisers which burn up soil carbon and so lead to topsoil loss or soil erosion.

All that sugar cane could be replaced by multispecies pastures which if rotationally grazed, (the subject of a previous column) will not only sequester carbon which leads to topsoil being built but also nourish the humans eating that meat. Grass fed meat has the correct ratio of Omega 6 and 3.

There is also enough land to plant millions of trees into shelterbelts around and amongst the aforementioned pastures. To learn more about this subject, please go to my blog at www.farmerangus.co.za and look for the article on shelterbelts in the archive.

I grew up on a cattle ranch in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Studied Management Accounting at Stellenbosch University before stockbroking for Goldman Sachs in London for just over four years. Declined the offer of promotion, left my job and moved to South Africa. Built a clay home with inspiration from various people on the way leading to me become a biodynamic student, grass farmer and carbon sequestrator.